


The Worst That Could Have Been

by Saraste



Series: Tolkien Fic Week [3]
Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Battle of Five Armies Fix-It, M/M, Tolkien Fic Week, shirehusbands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-05-25
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:22:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24374974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saraste/pseuds/Saraste
Summary: Thorin has nightmares of what could have been, but also has a husband to sooth them away.
Relationships: Bilbo Baggins/Thorin Oakenshield
Series: Tolkien Fic Week [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1757257
Comments: 4
Kudos: 62





	The Worst That Could Have Been

**Author's Note:**

> Written for day 3 : a gift of Tolkien Fic Week.

Thorin’s heart almost skips a beat, sometimes, when he thinks about his current happiness, but he always remembers to be grateful for every single moment he's allotted. 

Because he had once taken happiness for granted, in the Erebor of his early years, and that happiness had been taken away through dragonfire and death, and his heart almost irrevocably hardened by the years of wandering and the too-dearly paid losses at the folly of Azanulbizar. He knows loss, the festering pain it leaves, but it hasn’t thankfully ever fully hardened his heart. 

First, there had still been his sister to love and then his sister-sons, first one and then two, the delight and light to all those of their family who’d still been left, two pebblings more precious than any gems, priceless beyond counting. His sister-sons had taught him to smile again without conscious effort. And for them he had later given up on Erebor for himself, struggled from madness to reason through the gold-sickness. He still has horrible nightmares about what might have happened, if he hadn’t, the cost that might have been paid for reclaiming the Mountain. Never again, he’d vowed, holding Frerin’s broken body, taken too young and too cruel, never again would he let such a loss be incurred. That thought alone, the memory of his brother’s smile and his vow at Azanulbizar, and the voice of the one he'd called  _ beloved  _ in his heart if not with his words, those had made him see the path he’d been on. Had made him stop and think and  _ choose reason. _

Still, he dreams of the worst that could have been.

A small, familiar hand soothes him as he shakes awake from one of those very nightmares, where he'd held the lifeless, bloodied bodies of his beloved sister-sons in his arms, wailing up to uncaring skies as their blood gad painted the snow below them red and their sightless eyes had stared at him, accusing.

‘Again?’ Bilbo asks, sounding tired. A bird trills a too-early song somewhere outside the windows where the world is still the grey colour of pre-dawn.

Thorin sighs, forcing away the shadows of his darkest dreams. 

His hand seeks out Bilbo’s, but it’s his husbands squeezing his, not the other way around, it’s  _ him _ taking the comfort Bilbo gives so easily. Calm settles in his heart and he knows that he’s safe, that  _ they _ are. He has not lost those dearest to him.

A simple, easy life in the Shire, in his cozy smial, that is the gift Bilbo has given him, and it still feels more than what Thorin thinks that he deserves, sometimes, because of what could have been but wasn’t.

‘They’re alive,’ he says into the hush of the room, because he needs to hear it out loud, not just think it inside his head, knowing his thoughts can betray him if he lets them. Still do, in his most real-feeling dreams. 

‘They’re alive,’ Bilbo echoes his words, firm and sure and true, and squeezes his bigger hand with the strength that had been surprising in the beginning, but isn’t any longer.

They’re silent for a moment, there’s not even a sliver of early morning light trying to peek through the slight gap in the curtains, it really is far too early for either of them to rise. Well, for Bilbo to rise. Thorin sometimes finds that he cannot sleep after a particularly nasty nightmare and has to get up and occupy himself with some small task to chase the lingering shadows away.

Bilbo presses closer against his side. ‘Do you want to send a raven?’

Thorin smiles in the darkness. ‘In the morning, it is still too early to rise.’

Then the sheets rustle and then Bilbo’s lips are pressed to his in a soft and sweet kiss which reminds Thorin of everything he now has, still has, every good and kind thing, the love he has found when he had thought there’d be none for him beyond family.

He finds his body stirring, answering even the soft, chaste comfort of Bilbo’s lips on his with lust.

‘Do you want to try and sleep or…’ Bilbo asks him, letting the words hang in the whisper-space between their lips, too soon parted for Thorin’s liking.

‘Kiss me again,’ is all Thorin says, all he needs to.

And Bilbo does.

  
  



End file.
